Learn startup intuition through history

ZeroOne Terminal is a strategy simulation designed to build startup intuition through history. You sit in the VC chair from 2000 to 2020, evaluating five startups per year, right as the world shifts under your feet.

Each startup is inspired by real companies, real failures, and real breakthroughs, then fictionalized into a compact interview you can actually play. The point is not trivia. The point is judgment under uncertainty.

How you learn

You do not learn by reading lessons. You learn by asking the wrong questions, missing the signal, and watching the outcome play out.

When you get it right, you feel why it worked. When you get it wrong, you see exactly what you misunderstood.

There is no grinding, no fake choices, and no padding. You get incomplete information, a limited number of questions, and consequences.

The Zero to One lenses

To evaluate founders, you use a distilled version of the seven Zero to One lenses:

• Timing
• Engineering (10× improvement)
• The Secret
• Monopoly
• Distribution
• People
• Durability

These lenses are not theory for theory’s sake. They are a compression of what consistently separates breakout companies from dead ends.

Most startups do not fail in interesting ways. They fail for predictable reasons, and those reasons repeat across decades.

Guidance, not hand holding

A Thiel-like mentor introduces each era, explains the environment, and points out what you missed or understood.

His role is context and narrative, not hand holding. You still have to make the calls.

The game is built to train pattern recognition, so that you notice the real signals before you waste months, or years, on the wrong idea.

Scope and format

• Demo: Year 2000, about 15 minutes
• Full game: Two decades of technological shifts

You experience the rise of search, social, mobile, cloud, crypto, and AI, and the moments where everything almost went wrong.

Why this exists

Most people learn these lessons after they fail.

You can learn them before.

The Developer

Created by Patrik Cihal and built entirely in Rust with Dioxus.

Contact: [email protected]